Original NES Advantage Controller Stuffed with Clone NES

Like all good hackers [Osgeld] makes regular appearances at the thrift store to scavenge for raw materials. This summer he was lucky enough to come across a couple of NES clone games. These are controllers that emulate the original Nintendo Entertainment System by connecting to a television using composite video. The mechanics of the controllers were pretty much shot, but he knew he could do something with the boards inside. It was a small gamble at a dollar apiece anyway.

As you can see above, he upgraded a vintage NES Advantage controller by stuffing it full of the emulator hardware. To start he disassembled the arcade-like peripheral and gave everything a thorough cleaning. Since he was going to be soldering onto the PCBs anyway he upgraded the controller by swapping out the original switches for a different set of tactile switches. The large base provided plenty of room for [Osgeld] to fit the emulator (with included ROMs) and now he’s Playing with Power.

“Famiclone” is the word you are looking for, not “emulator”. Emulators are effectively virtual machines that can run code designed for one architecture on a different one, whereas 99.9% of Famiclones are simply one-chip hardware-level implementations of the NES’s hardware.

I’m just digging the Apple //c in the background; I was wondering if it was somehow integrated into the game hack but I guess it’s just serving as a lowly base for the display. The //c was one of the first computers I had as a child.

the IIc is my most used retro computer, its fired up at a minimum of once a week. That being said it happened to be the closest non PC tv solution at hand and it fit on the desk, so I plugged it in there